With hundreds of hosting services ready to meet the needs of webmasters, choosing one can be a daunting task. There are many things to consider when choosing a hosting service for your website. Determining your specific needs based on the type of website you are planning is the first and most important step.
Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into a website and its importance to you or perhaps even your business, you will want to find a hosting service that has an excellent reputation and offers little down-time. Today, even highly reputable hosts will have "budget offerings" that can provide stable hosting at reasonable rates. Though many people make the decision based solely on price, the best deal isn’t always the cheapest.
We all know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to choosing a service company, online or off, presentation says a lot. A web hosting provider with a poorly written website or an unattractive presentation doesn’t give much of a sense of reliability or professionalism. Support and overall services will potentially be less than desirable. In this scenario, it doesn’t matter how cheap the hosting plan is.
There are many things to consider when choosing a hosting service for your website. Determining your specific needs based on the type of website you are planning is the first and most important step. If you haven’t actually created your website pages, consider making a site map or an outline of what you propose to get a clearer picture on the number of pages and bandwidth you may need.
• Space: The amount of space your website will require is often related to the type of site. A personal website will need a smaller amount of space, perhaps as little as 20 megs of space, than a merchant or store-front site with a lot of media or download files that require a great deal of space.
• Bandwidth – Traffic – Transfer: This is the amount of information that is transmitted to the individuals who view your site, typically calculated over a month’s period. Your transfer rate is the total size of your site files in kilobytes or megabytes and multiplied by the number of visitors expected to visit your site. This calculation is not very accurate and usually higher than your traffic will actually be; but overestimating will leave room to grow your website within the hosting plan you have chosen.
Hosting Service Features
Most start-up websites begin small with the hope of growing to become a major player on the web. Beginning small makes sense in that you can always upgrade as you get a better idea of how things works and how well your site is being received. So be sure that the hosting service offers a variety of increasingly larger plans to handle growth.
The complexity of the features offered will depend, once again, on page content. If you plan to publish static pages with content that will be updated personally, limited features will be less daunting and easier to manage. Also, if you are using simple HTML pages, a trimmed-down hosting service may be best.
Sites that require a database or active scripting need a host server that understands and supports the language. Common alternatives are PHP, ASP.net, and ColdFusion. Some of the options will vary depending on the type of server your host uses, most commonly Linux or Windows.
Other features that may be important to your website include mailing lists, merchant account support, forum software, etc. Sites that will offer a shopping cart need a host that will support the feature. Statistic packages like Urchin may be useful to merchant sites to learn more about and track visitors to their site.
Customer Support Services
A quality hosting company will offer top-rate support at all levels of their services. Poor support may mean that your site is off-line more than it is on. Ideally, they will offer direct phone support to speak with a technician 7 days a week. During off hours, the minimum amount of support offered should include a ‘help desk’ to email your questions or concerns, with a respond expected within 48 hours and a system that tracks your support history and is always available. Another option offered by some top-notch services is ‘live chat.’ A service offering all three contact options shows that they’ve invested some time and energy into customer support.
Points to Consider When Choosing a Hosting Provider:
1. Is the provider financially sound or profitable?
2. Do they deliver the up-time you need?
3. Are there guarantees to your business?
4. Do they offer a range of hosting services?
5. Do they provide unlimited support 24/7 or offer fee-based support?
6. Do they support the critical compliance standards you need?
Compare numerous web hosting providers and domain name services. Read articles and reviews to help you choose the right host company for your web site needs. You will find information on dedicated servers, shared hosting, budget, e-commerce and other web publishing services.
Noreen Ruth is a writer specializing in credit card and financial information, she has extensive knowledge and experience writing articles that help consumers use credit to their best advantage. Compare numerous web hosting providers and domain name services. Read articles and reviews to help you choose the right host company for your web site needs. You will find information on dedicated servers, shared hosting, budget, e-commerce and other web publishing services.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Basics of Hosting Services for Business or Personal Websites